


you think you know it all, but you won’t

by rosesscythes



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-01
Updated: 2019-03-01
Packaged: 2019-11-07 11:04:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17959292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosesscythes/pseuds/rosesscythes
Summary: It’s almost ironic, when Blue actually bothers to think about it. That Red is in one spot, staying there for years on end, but he’s supposed to be in a lot of spots, running around Kanto or even the world; meanwhile, Blue is in any spot but the one he’s supposed to be, fucking off to wherever he feels like, whenever he feels like, rather than sit there and do his job for once.





	you think you know it all, but you won’t

It’s almost ironic, when Blue actually bothers to think about it. That Red is in one spot, staying there for years on end, but he’s supposed to be in a lot of spots, running around Kanto or even the world; meanwhile, Blue is in any spot but the one he’s supposed to be, fucking off to wherever he feels like, whenever he feels like, rather than sit there and do his job for once.

But unfortunately for him, as much as he insists he’s ready to calm down and mature whenever Gramps or Lance or Daisy press him on it, the very drive that took him away from home is keeping him away.

He stood implacably now on the roof of the Celadon Department Store, calmly sipping a lemonade as he very stubbornly looked anywhere but west, watching the streets below him. He’d told his trainers, his employees, that it’d just be a simple shopping trip, just pick up some vitamins and maybe check out the TMs they had on sale. Not too long of an absence, not this time, he’d sworn.

That’d been about six hours ago. Oh, sure, he’d done what he needed to pretty quickly. But a mild thirst led him to the roof, and from there he was pretty quickly captivated by the sight from the massive building’s roof.

The sight anywhere but west.

He focused instead on the south. From here he could see Celadon’s city limits, out into an inlet from the ocean used as a private breeding ground for the rarer water types like Squirtle and Lapras. He could just barely then make out the grounds of the Safari Zone, far too far away to see if anyone was out for a game today. Not that it mattered, he’d heard the place was closing up soon anyways.

Not that it mattered, given that he’d caught everything available there on his first run through.

He tried peering farther than that, but just couldn’t glimpse into Fuchsia itself. He didn’t remember the city well anyways, just a quick run through the Safari Zone and a Gym Battle. Blue reflected briefly on the fact that he’d been forced to fill a Gym Leader position and just a year later Agatha had passed away and Koga, who’d never even made it past Bruno, had become an Elite Four member.

Even though Blue had been champion. He’d been champion for maybe three hours, but he could recall every second in glorious detail. He’d strutted around the Hall of Fame chambers, smugly musing on the fact that he’d now have all the freedom he wanted, not only away from Gramps but with authority to boot, and on top of all that he could call himself inarguably better than-

Well, he knew that that was a fucking sham. He was a child back then, whether he liked to admit it or not. And now he was a teenager, with a few years of extra experience, and he couldn’t even stay at a fucking Gym for too long without getting restless, tired of waiting on a challenger who could actually give him as good as he gave, tired of the politics that had erupted between Giovanni’s abdication and then-

Fuck, he may not have been looking for Red, may have been deliberately ignoring the mountain that he could see to the west far more easily than even the barest outline of Fuchsia, but the thoughts of him came anyways.

He refocused. He still couldn’t actively see Fuchsia himself, but he could picture a camera in his mind, swooping like a Pidgeot over the city. He imagined what was past it, the shores of Route 19, the ocean path that marked one of Kanto’s rough borders, that turned into Route 20 to pass the Seafoam Islands. Another unremarkable spot, at least when he was on his journey. He’d gone in, collected a few Pokémon, and then fucked around until inevitably he’d discovered that Articuno was registered in the Pokedex already by-

Goddamnit.

He turned away from the islands in his mind, and focused on the next one: Cinnabar. Now there was a source of pride, even if it was during his Gym Leader years. With only hours to spare until its volcano’s eruption, he’d spearheaded relief efforts, riding on his Pidgeot and directing people to the safe mainland. A very famous photo had circulated of Blue hoisting up a pair of twins as the first streams of magma had started rumbling down the volcano’s edge in the background. He’d been hailed a hero.

A hero just like Red. But there were no famous photographs of Red, just a few snapshots from Fame Checker users and one rather infamous one of him just having accepted the Championship, of a reserved young man who would disappear into the blue less than a week later, his goal accomplished, rest of the world be damned.

Blue had photos, of course. Little pictures of him and Red at an even more little age, playing around and being kids, dotted both Red’s house and Oak’s. And of course in both houses the photos were much more focused on Red.

It wasn’t Red that nagged him, really. He could deal with fucking Red, and his fucking innate superiority, and that fucking mountain to the west that Blue hates climbing whenever he got the idea in his head to go have a good scream about what a fucking asshole Red was for leaving like that, for not coming down, for not saying a word.

What nagged Blue was having his childhood stolen out from under him by someone who didn’t even understand his role in it. Because he was always second-best in Gramps’ eyes, because he’d had his dream job stolen in a matter of hours without getting a chance to realize that he would’ve sucked at it for himself, because he was now stuck in a new dead-end job that he didn’t even bother showing up for half the time. Because sure, Red was the hero, the one who’d accomplished everything. But Blue was the one actually there the whole time, the one who was wasting all his fucking time trying to answer the question of what to do with himself.

Cinnabar, he quite suddenly realized, was where he’d had his own, private peak. Where he’d probably recaptured what it felt like during his Championship in just as fleeting a moment.

Blue pursed his lips and glanced west. That mountain was still sitting there, as unmoving as he’d been for hours now. He stretched himself out, threw away his lemonade, and texted a half-truth about having ended up in Cinnabar to one of his employees. He was headed there anyways.

The mountain could wait. He had his life to live.


End file.
